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THE YOUTH OF MIRABEAU 



By FRED MORROW FLING 



REPRINTED FROM THE 



l^mmatt p)St(»tfiat §mm 



VOL. VIII No. 4 



July 1903 



THE YOUTH OF MIRABEAU 

The last week in February, 1764, young Mirabeau, a stout, 
pock-marked youth of fifteen, arrived at Versailles, where he ap- 
peared incognito, probably under the name M. de Pierre-Buffiere.^ 
M. de Sigrais, the friend of the marquis who had agreed to take 
charge of the boy, was a "brave soldier, a good Latinist, a captain 
of cavalry, and a member of the Academie des iiisa'iptions et belles- 
lettres." Although married, Sigrais had no children. His wife 
being first lady in waiting to the dauphine, the mother of Louis 
XVI., he resided with her for a portion of the year at Ver- 
sailles.^ 

Of the experiment tried by the Sigrais family we know little 
more than that it promised much, but failed signally. In a letter to 
his brother the marquis described the manner in which he had 
worked on their feehngs and induced them to take his son : ^ " As to 
my eldest, who has given me, and still gives me, more trouble than 
all the rest of the family, do you know what action I have taken ? 
He has now been for three days incognito at Versailles in the hands 
of the big Sigrais, who has taken charge of him. You know this 
worthy man, his appearance and manner. He is to have with him 

■ Correspondance Generale, IV. 384, The marquis to the bailli, Paris, February 
28, 1764. (It is by this title that I refer to the manuscript correspondence between the 
marquis and his brother. It is contained in twelve large volumes and is the property of 
M. Lucas de Montigny of Aix en Provence, through whose kindness I was allowed to 
consult it. This correspondence, only portions of which have been published, is the 
chief source of information concerning the early life of Mirabeau.) *'I1 est actuelle- 
ment depuis trois jours incognito a Versailles." The marquis does not state in this letter 
what name had been given to his son. In a letter of June 2, 1764, the boy is referred 
to as M. de Pierre-Buffi&e. " C'^tait tout simplement," writes M. de Lomenie {Les 
Mirabeau, III. 23), "le nom d'uneterre importante, prds de Limoges, devant revenir au 
marquis du chef de sa femme, et qui lui permettait de prendre le titre de premier baron 
du Limousin. Nous ne jurerions pas que le marquis n'etait mis quelque vanite a faire 
porter par son fils le nom de cette terre." This hypothesis is clearly untenable. Mira- 
beau left home in disgrace. Referring to his departure, the marquis wrote his son in 
1770, " Je vous ai dit en sortant de chez moi que vous ne reverrez la maison paternelle 
que je ne vous scusse change" (Correspondance Generale, VI. The marquis to the 
bailli, Paris, June I, 1770). In May, 1770, when Mirabeau was with his uncle in 
Provence, the marquis wrote to his brother : " Si tu continues et persistes a en etre con- 
tent, je te prepare un cadeau k lui faire, c'est d'obtenir qu'il prenne notre nom" (Corre- 
spondance Generale, VI. The marquis to the bailli, May 29, 1770). 

2 Lomenie, Les Mirabeau, III. 22. 

3 Correspondance Generale, IV. 384. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, February 28, 

1764. 

657 



658 F. M. Fling 






for some time yet a friend of his youth of the same cut and figure 
as himself, but stouter and more rustic. He will take the young 
man into the fields and be the good soldier, while Sigrais will be 
the bad one. To describe to you the course that I took to win 
these worthy people, not only hiding nothing from them, but even 
heaping up the measure, would take too long. You will see at 
once that I touched the noble and almost romantic soul of Sigrais 
and that this success is the result of the reputation that providence 
has conferred upon me by paying me in the money of the esteem 
of honest people, which is worth as much as any other treasure. It 
is a matter of religion with this good man to do everything to suc- 
ceed. As for myself, I hope at least to draw from it the consola- 
tion of having neglected nothing in the performance of my duty in 
this matter and in the attempt to correct nature.'" 

At the end of three months Sigrais, with tears in his eyes, 
announced to the marquis that he would remain the jailer of his son 
as long as he pleased, but he despaired of ever doing anything with 
him. "That means," commented the marquis, "that the inexplic- 
able derangement of his head is incurable."^ He had never been 
confident that the experiment would succeed. After the boy had 
been with Sigrais two months, the marquis referred to the possi- 
bility of his eldest son's becoming a good man as the result of pun- 
ishment.^ It was his method of "correcting nature." There is no 
indication in this letter — the only one in which Mirabeau is referred 
to before his father announced the failure of the experiment — that 
Sigrais was succeeding. The marquis still entertained the idea of 
dividing the estate, even if the eldest should be reclaimed. Boni- 
face, "who is always the same, an excellent child," was being 
educated in the school of the Barnabites at Montargis. The mar- 
quis informed his brother, with much satisfaction, that "Father de 
la Roque, who had especial charge of him, has written, in a letter 
to his brother that I was not expected to see, ' I have never seen a 
child at the same time more active and more gentle.' " The mar- 
quis believed that he had every reason to be contented with his 
youngest son."* 

1 While Mirabeau was with Sigrais the bailli wrote to the marquis as follows : 
" Quant k I'aini, je souhaite et meme j'esp^re que le Sigrais en tirera le parti le plus 
avantageux que son ditoffe comporte. II ressemble diablement pour la figure au grand p4re 
maternel. Pent etre que quand le monde le pressera de tous cotes et qu'il ne trouvera 
plus I'indulgence qu'il est impossible qu'on ne trouve pas dans la maison paternelle, son 
amour propre I'engagera au moins montrer ses defauts et cela les diminue b. cet age \k." 
Ihid., IV. 476. The bailli to the marquis, Malte, May 24, 1764. 

''■Ibid., IV. 465. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, June 2, 1764. 

3 Ibid., IV. 396. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April 24, 1764. 

^ Ibid., IV. 384. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, February 28, 1764. 



y^ ^ . <R^<aA<UAjU. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 659 

The failure of the residence with Sigrais to serve as " a transi- 
tion from the paternal house to the hberty of the army," for which 
the marquis intended his son, induced him to send the boy to a mil- 
itary school not unlike the one in which he had received a large 
portion of his own education. "I wished," he said, "for my own 
satisfaction, to give him the finishing touch by means of a public 
education and I sent him to the Abbe Choquard, who keeps one of 
the celebrated boarding-schools of the day, as they would not take 
him in the colleges in spite of all compliments. This man is severe 
and forces the punishment when necessary. This last trial made 
and completed, if there is no improvement, as I do not expect there 
will be, I will expatriate him bag and baggage." In the same letter 
in which he threatened his eldest son with such cruel punishment 
he informed the bailli that they might regard Boniface "as pretty 
nearly the sole resource of our house."' Two weeks later he 
referred to his "two boys, one of whom, according to appearance, 
ought not to be counted. Everything turns upon the head of Bon- 
iface, who is still an embryo."^ 

The school to which Mirabeau had been sent was in Paris, 
Barriere St. Dominique. It was not a reform school, nor had he, 
apparently, been sent there as a punishment for any particular mis- 
demeanor.^ The father did not want the son at home and had 
given such an account of him that the regular boarding-schools 
would not receive him. At the Abbe Choquard's he would be 
severely disciplined, but at the same time thoroughly prepared for 
entrance into the service. 

Among Mirabeau's fellow-pensioners were two young English- 
men, Gilbert and Hugh EUiot. The information concerning the 
character of the school and Mirabeau's life at this time is drawn 
chiefly from their letters.^ " No complaints of harsh treatment have, 
however, been recorded in the letters of the Elliots. In a style of 
which the idiom soon became more French than English, they de- 
scribe the little events of their school life ; their studies in ancient 

1 Jbid., IV. 465. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, June 2, 1764. 

^ Ibid., IV. 471. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, June 15, 1764. 

' " Une satyre sanglante, qu'il avait composee contre une amie de son pere, I'avait 
fait exiler de la maison paternelle, et releguer dans la pension de I'abbe Choquard, ou je 
leconnus." This statement appeared in an article published by the Journal de Paris 
immediately after Mirabeau's death (April 22, 1791). The writer claimed to have been 
a teacher of mathematics at the pension of Abbe Choquard while Mirabeau was a pupil 
in the institution. There is nothing in the correspondence between the two brothers 
that gives any support to the statement quoted above. It is not probable, however, that 
the marquis would mention a matter of that kind to the bailli. 

'The Countess of Minto, A Memoir of the Right Honorable Hugh Elliot (Edin- 
burgh, 1868 J. 



66o F. M. Fling 

and modern languages ; their lessons in dancing, swimming, fenc- 
ing, tennis ; their military drill on Sundays ; their parties in fine 
weather to Argenteuil, ' a village on the Seine not to be compared 
to Richmond,' and in the winter to the theatre to see Zaire, 'a 
tragedy by Monsieur de Voltaire ' ; the changes in their uniforms 
from blue and gold in winter to blue and silver, with a blue silk 
waistcoat, in summer. These and similar topics form the staple 
commodity of the boys' letters." ' In a letter to his mother, written 
September 12, 1765, Hugh described the celebration that took place 
at the school on the fete of St. Louis. " Our first appearance," he 
wrote, " was in arms, after having performed military operations 
until dark. The place where we exhibited, which was in the 
middle of a small plantation at the end of our garden, which was 
excessively pretty when illuminated with garlands and lustres, was 
at once changed from a field of battle to a dancing school. For 
having laid aside our arms we danced stage dances till ten o'clock, 
opera-singers warbling cantatas to the king's praises between every 
dance ; then the whole was shut by a firework.'" ^ One of the let- 
ters of Gilbert contains a description of a public examination : " The 
Abbe had thought to make a great coup by making the examina- 
tions open with a new exercise, which none of the troops in France 
will do until May ; but, alas, it was throwing pearls before swine, 
for there was little else than ladies and clergymen to see it, who did 
not know the new from the old one. Our friend Mirabeau then 
repeated a long discourse in praise of mathematics, composed by 
the Abbe ; and after a general clap, was examined on that part of 
his studies. I was examined after him on the same subject." ^ 

Two years later, at the celebration of the fete of St. Louis, 
" Mirabeau pronounced an oration of his own composition entitled 
' Eulogy of the Prince of Conde compared with Scipio Africanus.' 
It is mentioned by some of the journals of the time, probably at the 
instigation of the Abbe Choquard, who .was desirous of calling the 
attention of the public to his establishment. The editor of the 
Bachaumont collection makes mention of the eulogy under the date 
of January, 1767, and remarks, apropos of the young writer : ' It is 
to be noted that this young eagle is already following the flight of 
his illustrious father, and the anecdote becomes valuable for that 
reason. The son has more clearness, more elegance in his style, 
and his discourse is very well written.' "* 

^ Ibid., 4, 5. 

^ Ibid., 'i. 
'Ibid., 6. 

* Lomenie, IIT. 28. According to Mirabeau, Lettre de M. de S. M. mix Auteurs d,e 
la Gazette Littcraire, reprinted in the third edition of the Essai sur le Despotistne, this 



The YotUli of Mirabeau 66 1 

The Elliot boys, especially Gilbert, became very much attached 
to Mirabeau. The friendship did not end with their school-days. 
Twenty years later, when Mirabeau was the guest of Sir Gilbert in 
England, the latter, writing to his brother, described their old 
comrade as follows : " Mirabeau, though considerably ripened in 
abilities ... is as overbearing in his conversation, as awkward in 
his graces, as ugly and misshapen in face and person, and withal as 
perfectly sufficient, as we remember him twenty years ago at school. 
I loved him then, however, and so did you, though, as he confesses, 
you sometimes quarrelled with him, being always somewhat less pa- 
tient in admitting extreme pretensions than I." ' This retrospective 
portrait of young Mirabeau, drawn by a friend, would seem to prove 
that he possessed at this time in a well-developed form all the traits 
that composed his fully developed character. He was overbearing 
in his conversation, awkward in his graces, ugly and misshapen in 
face and person, and perfectly sufficient, and yet men loved him. 
This power to draw men to him, so early displayed, he never lost ; 
he exercised it equally upon his playmates at the Abbe Choquard's 
and upon the men who stood about his death-bed. During their 
residence in Paris the Elliots were in the charge of a tutor, Mr. 
Liston, afterwards Sir Robert Liston and English ambassador to 
Turkey ; and " Mr. Hume, to whom they had been specially com- 
mended, showed them great kindness, and often visited them and 
superintended their studies." Mirabeau was acquainted with Liston,. 
and it is probable that he also came into contact with Hume.^ 

Shortly after Mirabeau's death the Journal de Paris contained a; 
communication from one who professed to have been an instructor 
in the school of the Abbe Choquard.^ " M. de Mirabeau," wrote 
this correspondent, "was only fourteen years old when I found him 
in the military school of the Abbe Choquard, Barriere St. Domi- 
nique, where I was called to teach mathematics. I soon distin- 
guished him from his fellow-pupils on account of the nature of his 
questions, and the promptness with which he found the solution for 
a problem. Outside of my class he did nothing ; all that was 
studied in the pension and did not appeal to his imagination ap- 
peared insipid to him ; he wrote a miserable hand, which he never 

eulogy and some of his verses were printed at this time. " Alors on imprima quelques 
bagatelles du comte de Mirabeau," and in a foot-note he adds, "Un eloge du grand 
Conde, compose pour une fete publique ; quelques places de vers," etc. Essai sur le 
Despotisme, xix. (Paris, 1792. ) 

'Sir Gilbert Elliot, Life and Letters (3 vols., London, 1874), I. 87, note I. 

''Writing to Hugh Elliot in 1783, Mirabeau inquired about Liston, whom he called 
" le bon Liston," and added "s'il vit, ilne vous est surement pas etranger." Minto, 430, 
The reference to Hume is Minto, 6. 

^ Journal de Paris, I. No. 112. April 22, 1791. 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. VIU. — 43. 



662 F. M. Flins- 



<b 



seriously undertook to improve. Seeing him absolutely unoccu- 
pied, I proposed to him that he come and work with me and had 
him read the Essay on the Human Understanding by Locke. While 
reading the first chapter of the second book, with which I had him 
begin, he fell into a profound revery; and all at once awaking as from 
a dream, he cried, 'There is the book that I needed,' memorable 
words that I have never forgotten, and he was only fourteenyears old. 

" We read together the last three books of Locke's work. The 
astonishing penetration of young Mirabeau, his association of ideas, 
his singular reflections, caus'ed me to conceive the greatest hopes of 
him. Before knowing me he had written very energetic verses with 
great facility, but the reading of Locke, which he finished in three 
months, made him neglect from that time on a talent that had been 
injurious to him." The writer of this anecdote left the pension the 
following year. Some time later he encountered Mirabeau in the 
Tuileries. Running to him, Mirabeau greeted him with " extreme 
vehemence," saying, " Ah ! I shall never forget that you made me 
read Locke." 

However much truth there may be in the anecdote concerning 
Locke — it certainly is highly probable, the boy being at this time 
fifteen instead of fourteen, and very precocious — the statements con- 
cerning his mathematical ability are supported both by words of 
Gilbert Elliot and by Mirabeau's own reference to his mathematical 
studies. " I pushed mathematics in two years," he wrote while at 
Vincennes, "'beyond differential and integral calculus." ' At another 
time he declared that he had studied mathematics " from his earliest 
youth." 2 

In the Choquard pension Mirabeau remained for three years. 
Concerning the influence upon his character of the training received 
in the school,^ and the vicissitudes in his relations with his father 
during this time, little can be said with certainty. Judging from the 
letters of the marquis to the bailli in their collected correspondence, 
the experiment was a success. , After Mirabeau had been in the 
school about two months his father wrote to his uncle that " M. Cho- 
quard pretends that he has more than half conquered M. de Pierre- 
Buffiere, and finally he does not send him back to me. That is a 
great deal." '^ In January of the following year he "was assured 

1 Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, III. 24. 

'^Ibid., 11. 289. 

' Mirabeau says of the training he received in the pension : " II y apprit les mathS- 
matiques, ety r^ussit; ^tudia superficiellement quelques langues." Essai sitr le Dei- 
totisme, xix. 

* Correspondance G^n^rale, IV. 486. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, July 17, 
1764. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 663 

that a great change had taken place in his eldest son." Always 
skeptical, the marquis added by way of comment, " I am watching 
and keep my hands off." ' The letters of the two years that follow 
contain no reference to Mirabeau. On March 31, 1767, his father 
announced that he was about to send him to the army." 

The letters quoted by M. de Montigny — the originals of which 
I have never seen — introduce deeper shadows into the picture and 
place the marquis in a more unfavorable light. These quotations 
are from letters addressed to the bailli and to the Comte du Saillant, 
the son-in-law of the marquis. Are they genuine ? They may be 
as a whole, but how much of each quotation is an exact reproduc- 
tion of the original it is impossible to say without a comparison 
with the originals. It is seldom safe to quote the language of the 
letters published by M. de Montigny ; it may be permissible to give 
the substance of them. ^ In August, 1764, the marquis learned that 
the boy had been receiving money from his mother.^ It was, per- 
haps, to prevent all such interference with the education of his son 
that the marquis gave orders that he should not be permitted to 
correspond with any person outside of the school.'' At the close 
of the first year, for reasons of which we know nothing, Mirabeau 
was to have been removed from the school and submitted to more 
severe discipline elsewhere.^ His comrades were so attached to him 
and so affected by the news of the misfortune that was about to be- 
fall him that they sent a deputation to the marquis bearing a petition 
signed by all of them asking for a suspension of the sentence. The 
marquis granted three months. 

The reports from that time on must have been favorable, for the 
next quotation is from a letter written to the Comte du Saillant in 
February, 1766, in which the marquis announced that he hoped to 
save his eldest son, although the boy had a long road to travel on the 
way to reform.^ Before the year had closed, the hopeful mood had 
passed and the marquis announced his intention of leaving his son 
with Choquard until he could send him to the north to remove 
him from the places where he might be a burden after the mar- 
quis's death. ^ 

1 Ibid., V. 10. The marquis to the bailli,. Paris, January 5i IT^S- 

2 Ibid., V. 270. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, March 31, 1767. 

^ I never quote the letters contained in the work of M. de Montigny when I have ac- 
cess to the originals or reliable copies of the originals. 

■• Montigny, Memoires de Mirabeati, I. 279. The marquis to the Comte du Saillant, 
August 30, 1764. 

* Ibid., I. 279. The marquis to the bailli, October 31, 1764. 
^ Ibid., I. 280. The marquis to the bailli, August 7, 1782. 

' Ibid. 

* Ibid., I. 281. The marquis to the Comte du Saillant, December 13, 1766. 



664 ^ M. Flmg 

It is important that the attitude of the marquis toward his 
younger son during this period should not be lost sight of. He 
was as persistent in his fondness for the one as he was in his dishke 
for the other, and continued to cherish the plan of marrying the 
younger in Provence and making him the heir of the old family 
possessions in that region. " We need a master for our patrimonial 
estates," he wrote to the bailli in March, 1767. " Boniface has my 
character in wishing to be always on pleasant terms with those 
around him, bon camarade, for so they call him. He never quarrels, 
has a great memory, dissipation prodigieuse , a bon enfant. From 
you he gets his firmness and a truthfulness that is unique. Finally, 
he promises to be a bon snjet." ^ 

To establish external facts is at times not difficult ; to explain 
these facts, to make clear the motives that led to the visible acts is 
often impossible. Young Gabriel was ugly and resembled his 
maternal ancestors ; his mother lived apart from his father and was 
at war with him ; the boy was in communication with his mother 
and received money from her. Boniface was personally attractive 
and resembled his father ; there is no' evidence to show that he 
took any interest in his mother. The father disliked the one boy 
and was fond of the other. These are the facts that have led his- 
torians to attribute all the hostility of the marquis toward his eldest 
son to this maternal likeness and to the interest taken by the boy 
in the mother's cause. There is practically no evidence to show 
that Mirabeau, in his early years, ever took sides in this family 
quarrel. True, Madame de Pailly did not like him, but her attitude 
may be partially explained by evidence that has often been over- 
looked. Mirabeau was an extraordinary child and not easy to 
manage. It is quite conceivable that without any family quarrel, 
without any Madame de Pailly, his education might have been a 
failure and that he might have turned out much the same sort of 
character that he finally became. It is quite possible that the main 
cause of trouble was the boy's disposition, while Madame de Pailly, 
his ugliness, his resemblance to his maternal grandfather, and the 
separation only served to aggravate the situation. It is possible, 
for motives are a matter of inference ; but as long as psychological 
motives cannot be inferred with certainty from external acts, es- 
pecially when these acts are kw in number, and as long as the his- 
torian possesses no superhuman powers of divination, the careful 
student will hesitate to offer with any assurance an explanation for 
such phenomena as those involved in the relation of the Marquis 
de Mirabeau to his eldest son. 

> Correspondance Generale, V. 270. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, March 31, 
1767. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 665 

It is not necessary to assume that the marquis was actuated by 
harsh motives in removing his son from the Choquard pension. 
Mirabeau was eighteen years of age and, as his father intended him 
for the army, it was high time for him to begin the serious work of 
his life. "As to my boys," he wrote to the bailli,' announcing his 
intended action, " the eldest is still a cross ; the world is full of 
trouble. I am going to send him as a volunteer (new style) to the 
roughest of military schools. A young man, but of the antique 
type, has founded it in his regiment. He pretends that the exclu- 
sive air of honor, united to a hard and cold regime, can restore 
lungs, even those that are naturally in very bad shape. I asked of 
him as mentor an officer who, without argumentation or talkative- 
ness, has by instinct a disgust and natural disdain for everything 
related to cowardice. He said that his man was such a one. I 
have, in fact, seen two fathers thank him for having created a son 
for them. I ought to neglect nothing. I am going, then, to follow 
this road." 

" When my son entered the service," he wrote later," "you may 
infer from what you know of the past that I neglected nothing that 
he might be in good hands, were it for no other reason than that I 
might have nothing to reproach myself with. The Marquis de 
Lambert, to whom I had confided him, and who was pointed out 
to me on all sides as keeping the best and strictest military school, 
asked of me, at least for a time, a trusty domestic and one author- 
ized to denounce him, above all one that he [Mirabeau] recognized 
as a mentor, not wishing to accustom him to think that espionage, 
even for a good motive, was a usual method. I proposed Grevin, 
whom he knew, and with whom he was delighted. I had difficulty 
in persuading him [Grevin] to consent to it for a time, but he is 
there." 

The Marquis de Lambert, to whose care Mirabeau had been 
entrusted, was colonel of the regiment of Berri-Cavalerie, belonging 
to the light horse of the French army, at that time stationed at 
Saintes. He was the grandson of the famous Madame Lambert, 
and related to the Vassans. He did not, however, take the part of 
the Marquise de Mirabeau in her affairs with her husband, being a 
friend of Madame de Rochfort and a devoted disciple of the Ami 
des liommes. Although holding the rank of brigadier, the Marquis 
de Lambert was at this time but twenty-six years of age. ^ 

On the nineteenth of July, 1767, Mirabeau joined his regiment. 
Saintes, the garrison town, charmingly situated upon the banks of 

^ Ibid., V. 270. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, March 21, 1767. 
^Ibid., v. 35g. The marquis to the hailli, Paris, August 7, 1767. 
"Lomenie, III. 29. 



666 F. M. Fling 

the Charente not far from Rochelle, is a quaint old place to-day 
and could hardly have been less so one hundred and thirty years 
ago. The broad, quietly flowing stream ; the old Roman bridge 
connecting the two parts of the town and supporting a beautiful 
triumphal arch ; the wide main avenue, with its great trees casting 
a deep shade, rising from the bridge over the hillside ; the crooked, 
picturesque streets ; the remains of the Roman amphitheater ; the 
impressive romanesque churches ; and the fine old fagade of the 
palace of justice — this was the picturesque environment of the 
young volunteer. Life in such a place was certainly not a hardship. 

Of Mirabeau's life during the first year we know practically 
nothing. Local tradition indicates a house in the Rue d' Alsace- 
Lorraine as the place of his residence, and reports that at one time 
he was confined in the tower of the old palace of justice.' M. 
Charles de Lomenie writes that " Mirabeau was one of the most 
insubordinate soldiers in the Berri-Cavalerie ; he passed a portion 
of his first year of service in the prison of the regiment," yet he 
gives no proof and I have been able to find little more than this 
tradition to which I have referred.^ As the tradition gives no date 
for his imprisonment, it is quite possible that it fell in the second 
year. No reference to Mirabeau is found in the correspondence 
between the marquis and the bailli until April 21, 1768, or near the 
close of the first year. " The news from the other [Mirabeau] is 
good," runs the letter; "I am going to get him a commission."' 
His conduct must have been unusually good to satisfy two such 
censors as his colonel and his father. 

On the twentieth of April, 1768, the marquis addressed himself 
to Choiseul, asking that his son be made a second lieutenant in the 
regiment in which he had served for nearly a year. " I have a son," 
he wrote, "whose youth was wayward. I prolonged and stiffened 

1 I have repeated the tradition as it was given to me by IVI. Louis Audiat, librarian 
of the city library at Saintes. 

^ The only additional evidence that I have found is in the report made in 1776 by the 
commission on Icltres de cachet on Mirabeau's case : " Apres une jeunesse beaucoup trop 
orageuse, avait et^ toujours en prison au regiment de Berri cavalerie oil Ton I'avait mis pour 
son ecole militaire sous le Mis. de Lambert." Memoire sur Mr. le Comte de M. Archives 
nationales, K. 164, No. 2, 32. The value of this evidence is questionable. The com- 
missioners undoubtedly had the statements of the marquis before them, and at the time 
this memoir was drawn up the marquis was extremely hostile to his son. A memoir of 
this character drawn up in 1776 could hardly outweigh the evidence of the marquis him- 
self given in 1768, that "the news from the other," meaning Mirabeau, " is good ; I 
am going to get him a commission." At the same time he made this statement to his 
brother, the marquis informed the minister to whom he applied for the commission that 
his son was " esteemed " in his regiment. The significance of this application for a com- 
mission evidently escaped M. de Lomenie. 

3 Correspondance Generale, V. 399. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April 21, 
1768. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 667 

his education in every way and by every method, preferring to 
delay his entry into the service rather tJian have him ruin himself at 
the outset ; when his age finally forced my hand I asked of the best 
officers of my acquaintance which of the military schools was the 
strictest and most exact. All agreed in namjng the regiment of 
Berri commanded by the Marquis de Lambert. I put him in this 
regiment as a volunteer. The young man submitted. He has now 
made himself esteemed and has never lacked wit nor talent. I 
waited until his colonel should say to me that it was time to ask a 
commission for him ; he has sent me the memoire that I have the 
honor to transmit to you ; my son was nineteen years old the tenth 
of March. I was not aware that a copy of his certificate of baptism 
would be necessary; I have sent to his birthplace for it and I 
promise you to send it to the bureau in a short time." ' 

The inclosed incmoirc from the colonel was as follows : " The 
Marquis de Lambert requests M. le due de Choiseul to be kind 
enough to procure for the Comte de Mirabeau a commission as 
sojis-liciitcnant reforvic a la suite dii regiment de Berry, where he has 
served for a year in the position of a volunteer. His birth is suf- 
ficiently well known so that it would be useless to add the ordinary 
certificates. The extract from the baptismal record is subjoined."^ 
M. Brette calls attention to " the cleverness with which De Lambert 
dwells upon the birth in order to avoid speaking of the conduct and 
the aptitudes of Mirabeau. These words, commission de sotis-lieu- 
tenaiit irforme a la sidte, testify to an attempt to reduce as much as 
possible his military position and consequently his responsibilities." ^ 
It may be so, but in the face of the father's letter and of the fact 
that at this time the colonel was evidently satisfied with Mirabeau, 
the inferences of M. Brette seem hardly to be justified by the evi- 
dence. On the same day that Choiseul received the letter of the 
marquis Mirabeau was made soiis-lieutenant sans appointemcnts in 
the cavalry regiment of Berri.* 

Some three months later, on a July day, the marquis was 
startled by the news that the young lieutenant, having lost eighty 
louis at play, had deserted and that his whereabouts was unknown. 
The marquis asserted later in a letter to the bailli that the news did 
not disturb him. "On the contrar.y," he wrote, " I found myself 

^The documents relating to Mirabeau's commission in the Berri cavalry were dis- 
covered by M. Brette and published in 1895 in the Bevohttion Fra7iiaut\ XXIX. 255— 
264, under the title " Les Services Militaires de Mirabeau." The originals are in the 
Archives administratives de la guerre, " au nom de Gabrielle-Honore de Mirabeau, sans 
cote speciale." 

^/(i/a',, 257. 

3 Ibid. , 258. 

^ Ibid., 259. 



668 F. M. Fling 

relieved by the fact that he had been guilty of a prank similar to 
that of others." A few days later he was informed that " M. de 
Pierre-Buffiere had been found in Paris, addressing himself to M. de 
Nivernois and opening against M. de Lambert a pack of recrimina- 
tive lies, almost convincing by force of his eloquent effrontery. It 
was this action that dictated his arrest, and on seeing this hideous 
heap of contraverities and this ingratitude I felt the soul of my 
father reproach me for having hoped to do anything with this mis- 
erable being after so many trials." ^ 

Mirabeau was indeed at Paris and appealing to the Due de 
Nivernois, as his father had stated. He had taken lodgings under 
an assumed name at the Hotel de Bretagne, Rue St. Andre-des- 
Arts, and writing to the Due de Choiseul had begged him to act as 
a mediator with his father and to grant him a hearing. " I dare to 
implore your intervention with my father," ran the letter, "whom I 
shall find cruelly irritated with me on account of the inconsiderate 
act to which I was driven by vivacity, anger, and human respect. 
M. de Lambert, my colonel, affronted me twice in so outrageous a 
manner that I had the whole city murmuring at my patience, which 
was looked upon as baseness. I felt that my mind, prodigiously 
agitated, was getting beyond my control. The fear of committing 
the greatest of follies, the humiliation of seeing myself shamefully 
ridiculed made me decide to leave Saintes. I set out by post, and 
whatever chances I may take in announcing to you my residence, I 
count sufficiently upon your justice and your goodness to confide 
to you that I am in Paris. Deign to conceal this from my father 
until you have been willing to hear me and to verify the facts I 
shall have the honor to state to you. I dare, then, to supplicate you 
to send to the Hotel de Bretagne, Rue St. Andre-des-Arts, a card 
upon which you will have been kind enough to give me your orders 
Concerning the hour that I beg you to grant to me. This card, 
.vithout name, presented to the porter, will be faithfully remitted to 
me and I shall take the liberty of calling upon you." The letter 
bore the date of July 21, 1768." 

What were these affronts that had so affected the mind of 
Mirabeau that he deserted his regiment, even, it is said, abandoning^ 

1 Correspondance Generale, V. 467. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, August 24, 
176S. 

2 A copy of this letter, made from the original in the possession of M. Lucas de 
Montigny, is given in the manuscript of M. Mouttet's volume entitled Mirabeau en 
Provence, now in my possession. 

^The memoir prepared in 1776 does not charge him with deserting his post, but 
states that he was sent to the lie de Re "pour avoir quitte et fui sans conge de ce 
regiment." Archives nationales, K. 164, Xo. 2, 32. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 669 

his post when on guard, to save himself from the danger of com- 
tnitting some crime that he might afterwards regret ? It was a 
love-affair. The story is told by M. de Montigny, but without the 
•citation of a particle of evidence : ^ " The young and beautiful 
■daughter of a constable of Saintes had pleased the Marquis de Lam- 
bert ; she had also pleased Mirabeau ; according to usage the second 
lieutenant had supplanted the colonel ; the latter, already harsh 
by nature, already indisposed, authorized, stimulated by the father 
and by Grevin, insulted his happy rival, had him insulted, or allowed 
him to be insulted by a coarse caricature, which set the whole 
regiment laughing at Mirabeau's expense ; then Lambert called the 
authority of his rank to the aid of his irritated amour-propre ; it was 
then that Gabriel, punished beyond measure, and unable to deceive 
himself concerning the cause had, ivliile on guard, abandoned his 
post and fled to Paris." 

This account rests, as far as I have been able to discover, simply 
upon oral tradition. Certainly M. de Montigny would have cited 
his documents, had any existed. " In the absence of proof," ob- 
serves M. de Lomenie, " it seems to us difficult to admit the exacti- 
tude of this grief. It is not easily reconciled with the general 
■esteem of which the character of M. de Lambert was the object. 
We shall see, elsewhere, on different occasions, that inventions of 
every kind cost little to Mirabeau's unscrupulous conscience." ' It 
is not safe, as a rule, to infer particular acts from a man's general 
character. The inferences may or may not be true. We know 
very little about the character of the Marquis de Lambert, and 
what we do know does not render the story impossible. The evi- 
■dence upon which the story rests is, apparently, worth little. Mira- 
beau makes no mention of his colonel as a rival, nor does he make 
any specific charges against him. In a letter written to his mother 
the following year he referred to Lambert as " a colonel unworthy 
to command officers who are better than himself." He added : 
Lambert "has employed all possible methods to destroy me. He 
has not succeeded." The historian must pass over the charge 
against the Marquis de Lambert, not because it is difficult to recon- 
cile with a character concerning which little is known, but because 
the proof is lacking. 

There was, however, a love-affair, even if the colonel was not 
one of the lovers. The father had believed that the gambling debt 
was the cause of all the trouble. He later wrote to the bailli that 
investigation showed that " it was a promise of marriage and all the 

1 Memoire de jMirabeaii, I. 2SS, 2S9. 

2 Lomenie, III. 31. 



670 F. M. Fling 

follies at one time." ^ There can be no doubt of this fact : we have 
Mirabeau's own word for it. In the letter to his mother already 
mentioned he referred to himself as " more unhappy than culpable," 
and added, "if I have sacrificed too much to love, I have given no 
cause for criticism as to the qualities of my heart and the knowl- 
edge relative to my profession." In the Lettres de Vinccnncs, in a 
memoire addressed to his father, Mirabeau asked what he had done 
at this time that should have led his father to think of sending him 
to the Dutch colonies. His own answer was, " I had loved." ^ In 
another letter in the same collection he summoned his father to de- 
clare why he was detained on the lie de Re: " Let him allege 
any other reason, if he can, than an intrigue with a woman that made 
him fear a union lual assortie." ^ 

The Due de Nivernois did not keep Mirabeau's secret. He 
communicated the news to the marquis ; and the Comte du Saillant, 
Mirabeau's brother-in-law, was "put upon his trail" — to use the 
language of the marquis — "frightening him, drawing him on, and 
consigning him to the hotel de Nivernois, surrounding him with 
spies, and discovering that he was connected with a horde of brig- 
ands ; his case won, he took him away by post, thirty-six hours 
later, to Saintes. There, in presence of the colonel, of the lieu- 
tenant-colonel, of his mentor, of Grevin, they made him confess at 
last, and they discovered that it is neither this nor that, it is a 
promise of marriage and all the follies at once. These worthy and 
zealous young men slip out and depart, and the Marquis de Lam- 
bert recovers his letters, comes back, and at once is taken ill, and I 
came very near losing this worthy young man who cherishes me 
and serves me like a son." ^ 

In a second interview, according to the marquis, who obtained 
his information from Lambert, the colonel " had read to him (Mira- 
beau) one of his letters that had been intercepted and that might 
have ruined him, cast it into the fire, and asked if he believed that 
a man capable of depriving himself of such weapons was an enemy. 
This act produced a sudden change ; he broke off at once all his 
liaisons, promised to submit to imprisonment as a favor, asked to 
have Grevin left with him, to be released only on the return of M. 
de Lambert, and to go back to his corps where he had so much to 
repair. The noble and sensible heart of M. de Lambert held out 

1 Correspondance Generale, V. 467. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, August 
24, 176S. 

2 Lettres Originates de Alirabeau^ I. 296. 
^ Ibid., I. 189. 

J Correspondance Generale, V. 467, The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, August 24, 
176S. 



The Youth of Mirabeait 671 

some hope to him. As for myself, I remarked to him (Lambert) 
that it was the displacement of the hammer of this fool from be- 
neath the chime of the desperate prisoner and the passionate lover ; 
that we could draw no other advantage from it than to transfer him 
without a scandal injurious to his family." ' 

Was it this intercepted letter that caused Mirabeau, fearing the 
action of his colonel and his father, to desert ? The explanation is 
not an improbable one. It should be noted, however, that the real 
situation became known only after Mirabeau's return to Saintes, 
and that Lambert recovered the letters in the possession of the 
young lady only after the confession. The effect upon Mirabeau 
of Lambert's chivalrous action in burning the intercepted letter 
should not be overlooked. Mirabeau always claimed that his 
father had shown him little affection ; that he had tried to discipline 
him by rigorous measures when he might have led him by kindly 
treatment.' Undoubtedly the father was unsympathetic and unduly 
severe ; undoubtedly the boy was in need of sympathy and capable 
of attaching himself to those who loved him, but his intentions were 
always better than his deeds and he was always ready to condone 
his own faults. 

The love-affair did not end here. " In 1770 Mirabeau was still 
in correspondence with the object of this first passion, through the 
medium of his sister, Madame de Cabris."^ 

The bailli was much incensed at the action of his nephew. " Your 
letter of the twenty-fourth of August, dear brother," he wrote, 
" filled me with consternation, informing me, as it did, of the new 
pranks of M. de Pierre-Buffiere, and fortunately the .little hint that 
you dropped before prepared me. But after having ruminated three 
days since the receipt of your letter upon the unique course to take, 
I see only one way. It is for you to decide, after a very detailed 
inspection of the case, whether you ought to follow this course, that 
is to say, if the excesses of this miserable being are such that he 
should be forever excluded from society, and in that case Holland 
is the best of all. You are certain of never seeing reappear on the 
horizon a wretched being, born to cause chagrin to his parents and 
shame to his race. It is, I say, for you, after the examination of 
his acts and deeds, to judge if the heart is rotten : if it is, there is 
no resource." Toward the close of the same letter he added, " I 
repeat to you, dear brother, this wretched being, if his heart is rot- 

1 Memoires' lie Mirabeau, I. 299. The marquis to the Comte du Saillant, October i, 
1768. 

^ Le/tres Originales de Mirabeau, I. 295. 

2 Lomenie, III. 34. 



672 F. M. Plmg 

ten, is without hope and in that case I know of nothing better than 
Holland." ^ 

It was not a simple ainoiirette, as M. de Montigny has called it; ^ 
it was the fear of a mesalliance on the part of the eldest son that 
appeared to enrage the uncle more than the father. It is not 
difficult to realize what the feelings of the bailli were, filled as he 
was with the pride of his race, when he learned of the narrow escape 
of the family from a disgrace like that formerly inflicted upon it by 
his younger brother. The more he dwelt upon it, the more serious 
it seemed and the more his anger increased. 

"I assure you," answered the marquis, "that I agree with all 
that you have said to me, both for the present and the future. But 
these things are easier to plan than to execute, above all in the age 
in which we live and with a rogue who has all the intrigue of the 
devil and the intelligence of a demon. The Marquis de Lambert 
said to me the other day that he had divided the city and the prov- 
ince between reason and him, and that in spite of his odious charac- 
ter, he would have found in the city of Saintes 20,000 livres that 
are not there." ^ 

Before hearing his brother's suggestion, the marquis had acted, 
sending Mirabeau to the lie de Re. " The bad subject is in prison," 
he announced in the same letter that informed the bailli of the esca- 
pade. " His brother-in-law, who has said so much in his behalf, is 
forced now to admit that a miracle will be necessary and that such 
as he is, he is a sewer. All this is shocking for the head, the 
stomach, and the purse of your elder brother, and as you could do 
nothing in the matter, it seemed better to say nothing at all to you 
about it ; but it is difficult to silence the heart in the presence of 
those whom we love and esteem. As I have domestic dragons of 
different kinds, for the present I would not have said anything more 
about it to you, had I not feared from your letter that you would 
accuse me of reticence toward you." ■* 

1 Correspondance Generale, V. 475, 476. The bailli to tlie marquis, Mirabeau, 
September 10, 1768. According to Mirabeau, his father assured him after their recon- 
ciliation in 1770 that in 1768 he had thought seriously of sending him to the Dutch 
colonies : " Qu'il me soil permis seulement de vous rappeler qu'apres m'avoir requ en 
grace, vous m'avez ayoue dans unede vos lettres,que vous aviez ete au vionte7ii de m^ envoyer 
aitx colo7iies Hollandahes, lors de ma dHentio7i d Visle de Rhe. Ce mot tit une profonde 
impression sur moi ; il a prodigieusement influe sur le reste de ma vie : et voila pourquoi 
je vous le rapelle. Daignez reflechir, en y pensant, que vous etes prompt a envisager 
les partis les plus violens. Qu'avais-je fait a dix-huit ans, pour que vous eussiez une 
telle id^e qui me fait fremir encore aujourd'hui que je suis enseveli toutvivant dansun 
tombeau?" Leiires Origina/es de Mirabeau, I. 295, 296. ' 

^ Memoires de Mirabeau, I. 289. 

^5 Correspondance Generale, V. 489. The marquis to the bailli, Fleury, Oct. 18, 1768. 

* Ibid., V. 467. The marquis to the bailli, Bignon, August 24, 1768. 



The Youth of Mirabemi 673 

Reasoning from the fact that the Icttre de cachet transferring 
Mirabeau to the ile de Re was issued by the minister of war, M. de 
Choiseul, and not by M. de Saint-Florentin, the minister who issued 
letters for matters of family discipline, M. de Lomenie infers that 
his imprisonment was a military punishment for his desertion.' It 
is possible, but it should be noticed that Choiseul would naturally 
deal with the matter because Mirabeau was an officer of the army, 
and also that the Marquis de Mirabeau evidently conducted the 
negotiations with the minister. 

" I assume that he is caged now," wrote the marquis to his 
brother, September 21, 176S, " in the chateau of the lie de Re and 
well recommended to the Bailli d'AuIan. This determination was 
necessary, the Marquis de Lambert not being able to keep him." - 
The colonel was eager to be rid of the troublesome lieutenant. 
" I have been occupied, " wrote the marquis, " in appeasing the im- 
patience of M. de Lambert, who, without taking distance into con- 
sideration, had hardly written to me before he was seriously dis- 
turbed at not seeing all that he asked of me arrive, nor any plan of 
agreement. As I had asked of M. de Choiseul that there should 
be as little scandal as possible, he proposed to me to send an order 
to M. de Pierre-Buffiere to carry a letter to the Marechal de Sen- 
neterre at Rochelle, who at once would have him arrested and con- 
ducted to the lie de Re." ^ It was in this way, probably, that the 
first lettre de cachet was executed against Mirabeau, and he found 
himself a military prisoner in the citadel at St. Martin on the lie 
de Re. 

The lie de Re, the scene of Mirabeau's first imprisonment, is a 
picturesque island off the harbor of Rochelle, some three miles 
from the mainland. Its length is some eighteen miles and its 
breadth three. The population to-day is nearly fifteen thousand, 
distributed among several towns. The largest is Saint-Martin de Re 
with two thousand inhabitants. At the entrance to the harbor of 
Saint-Martin rise the outworks of the fortress to which Mirabeau 
was consigned. Although now used as a depot from which con- 
victs are shipped to New Caledonia, the citadel has changed but 
little since the days when it was occcupied by its most distinguished 
prisoner. The diminutive harbor with its fishing craft ; the town 
with its quaint, antique streets shut in by stone houses whose white 

1 Lomenie, III. 33. 

^ Correspondance Generale, V. 476. The marquis to the bailh, Fleury, September 
21, 1768. 

^ Memoires de Mirabeau, I. 294. The marquis to the bailli, September 16, 1768. 
No letter of this date appears in the Correspondance Generale. There is a letter of the 
date of September 21, but it does not contain the quotations given by Montigny. 



674 F- M. Fling 

walls reflect the dazzling rays of the summer sun ; the attractive 
old town square with its ancient trees ; and, close by, the house 
formerly the home of the governor of the island, now occupied by 
the village school ; beyond the town, the vine-covered fields ; toward 
France, the waters of the Atlantic — these things to-day form a not 
unpleasant picture. It certainly was not a disagreeable place of 
exile, and in the mind of Mirabeau few unpleasant recollections 
were to be connected with it. The governor of the island, the 
Bailli d'Aulan, was not a harsh jailer, although the marquis had 
instructed him that the young man " was fiery, wrongheaded, and 
a liar by instinct." ^ The Comte de Broglie has called D'Aulan 
" the happy king of the lie de Re, the happiest region of France." 
He was z grand- croix, commander of the temple of Agen, marechal 
de camp of the armies of the king, and "the delight of the island." 
With his six feet of stature and his distinguished face, the Bailli 
d'Aulan was a worthy representative of the king.^ 

It is not probable that Mirabeau was closely confined in the cit- 
adel. Local tradition points to a room in the vicinity of the chapel 
as the one that he occupied,'' but he soon won the favor of the gov- 
ernor, and went and came much as he pleased. Although Gervin 
remained with him, the surveillance did not prevent Mirabeau from 
contracting debts nor even from corresponding with his mother, 
from whom he received financial aid.'* All this was a violation of 
the marquis's orders, but the son, as the father expressed it, "had 
bewitched the Bailli d'Aulan — who contrary to my orders allows him 

> Lom(Snie, III. 35. 

2 The local histories of the island contain notes upon D'Aulan. It is from one of 
these by M. Thedore Phelippot that I gathered the data upon D'Aulan found in the 
text. The hospital of Saint-Honor6 at Saint-Martin possesses a rather striking portrait 
of the bailli, which the sisters were kind enough to show to me. It is the face of a man 
of abundant good-nature and one not likely to prove a harsh jailer. The marquis wrote 
of him : " La reputation du Bailli d'Aulan est excellent ; c'est encore un nouveau temoin 
que je me procure et un nouveau appui de decision dans tous les cas." Correspondance 
Generale, V. 476. The marquis to the bailli, Fleury, September 21, 1768. 

'The search for material both at Saintes and at Saint-Martin was disappointing. 
The local archives in both of these places had been destroyed by fire a short time before 
my visit. From Dr. Kemmerer, a resident of Saint-Martin and one of the historians of 
the island, I learned that Mirabeau, according to tradition, occupied a room in the cita- 
del next to the chapel, but as there were three equally near the chapel the information was 
not very definite. The only change in the citadel, I was told, had been the construction 
of an inner wall between the main entrance and the chapel. The building that Mirabeau 
is supposed to have occupied is of stone, one story in height, with rooms not at all unat- 
tractive. It was from the lips of an American that the commandant of the place learned 
for the first time that Mirabeau had once been a prisoner in the citadel. I had a similar 
experience with the commandant of the Fort de Joux on the eastern frontier. 

^Manuscript of M. Mouttet, Mirabeau en Provence y 24-26 : " Je compte, ma chere 
Maman, sur le petit secours pecuniaire que vous me promettez, le nouveau m'est necessaire 
pour des dettes urgentes et forc^es que j'ai faites dans ce pays-ci." 



Tlie Youth of Mirabeau 675 

to promenade in the citadel — , my friends, and everybody." ' He was 
not only permitted to promenade in the citadel, but even " to go to 
the city (Saint-Martin or Rochelle) to dine in style."" The bailli 
was not the only one that Mirabeau bewitched. A certain Cheva- 
lier Brechant received the letters from his mother, and Mademoiselle 
de Malmont, the sister of the lieutenant of the citadel, performed 
a like service for him.'^ 

Mirabeau remained seven months on the lie de Re. At the end 
of six months the marquis realized that it would be difficult to pro- 
long the imprisonment. " The fact is," he wrote to the bailli on the 
fifteenth of February, 1769, "that it is necessary to end this affair; 
that I do not know how to keep his eldest brother in cage later 
than the spring ; that he asks to go to Corsica and interests the 
Bailli d'Aulan and my friends and Grevin in this request. I know 
well that, once free, he will end in having himself locked up for 
good before three months have passed ; but the theater of his follies 
is his passage through Provence." * On the twenty-seventh of the 
same month the marquis had decided to grant his son's request and 
to allow him to join the expedition against Corsica. " What you 
tell me, however," ran the letter, "causes me to decide upon my 
course. I cannot keep M. de Pierre-Buffiere any longer in cage 
and I cannot miss the occasion offered by Corsica ; so be assured 
that next month he will pass through Provence, but so carefully 
guarded and so rapidly that you will not even hear of it."" 

A few days later the news of the decision had reached Mirabeau. 
On the fifth of March, 1 769, he wrote to his mother : " My affairs 
have taken a more favorable turn ; the Bailli d'Aulan, governor of 
the He de Re, is soliciting the revocation of my lettre de cachet and 
it appears to be decided that I shall go to Corsica in a short time." ^ 
The Bailli d'Aulan interested himself in securing the release of his 
prisoner, but the important party in the transaction was the father. 
This is demonstrated by an official document bearing the date of 
March 13, 1769. "The twentieth of April, 1768," states the rec- 
ord, " the son of M. le Marquis de Mirabeau obtained the rank of 

1 Memoires de Mirabeau, I. 300. The marquis to the bailli. M. de Montigny 
refers to a letter of February 15, 1769, for this quotation ; but this letter, found in the 
collection that I have used, contains no such matter. The manner in which M. de 
Montigny manipulates his quotations and confuses dates in his foot-notes is inconceivable 
by any one that has not attempted to control his work by a comparison with the material 
that he used. 

2 Lomenie, III. 35, quoted from a letter of the marquis of January i, 1769. 

3 Mouttet, Mirabeau e7i Provence, 24-26. 

* Correspondance Generale, VI. 65, 66. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, Feb- 
ruary 15, 1769. 

^ Ibid., VI. 72. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, February 27, 1769. 
' Mouttet, Mirabeau en Prm.'e7ice, 24—26. 



676 F. M. Fling 

second lieutenant in the cavalry regiment of Berri. He had served 
in this regiment a year as a volunteer. He has been detained since 
the past year in the citadel of Re for misconduct. M. le Marquis 
de Mirabeau observes that his son has urgently requested permis- 
sion to take part in the campaign against Corsica, and that M. de 
Viomenil is willing to take charge of him and send him under fire. 
He requests that he be attached as second lieutenant of infantry to 
the legion of Lorraine. He desired that Monseigneur would kindly 
grant to him some appointments ; he leaves that matter to his sense 
of justice; he observes that his son has served for three years 
without having any.' In order that his son may join the legion of 
Lorraine, he asks that the revocation of the Icttre de cachet that 
detains him in the citadel of Re be sent to M. le Chevalier 
d'Aulan." 

It follows from this document that Mirabeau was imprisoned for 
misconduct, and was released at the request of his father. On the 
very day when this record was made the marquis announced that 
" the orders for his liberation have been sent," ^ indicating that he 
was in close touch with all that was taking place. Hoping little 
good from this latest experiment, the marquis, as usual, endeavored 
through repression to diminish the evil consequences of it. 

On the thirteenth of March the orders for Mirabeau's release 
had been given and his route across France had been decided upon. 
On the fourth of April, at the latest, he was to join the legion of 
Lorraine at the Pont St. Esprit. He was to serve in the infantry. 
"The Baron de Viomenil, colonel of this legion," wrote the mar- 
quis, "has been represented to me as just the man that he needs, 
and that service also for his fiery spirit, which imagines that it will 
devour everything, but which will devour nothing but a plentiful 
supply of saber strokes, if he has the nerve to face them. He has 
been recommended to everybody, and I had an opportunity to dis- 
cover how people like to compliment those who are in trouble. 
M. de Vaux himself said to me that they would hang him at public 
cost if he proved unworthy of his father, but that otherwise he 
•would be favored by everybody. He is going then with Grevin. 
He has orders to remain incognito until he has embarked ; I assure 
you that that is very important, for he could not exist twenty-four 
hours without getting into some kind of a scrape and replying to 
an act of politeness with an insult." ^ The bailli replied that if M. de 
Pierre-Buffiere passed that way and called upon him, he would re- 

1 La Revolution Frangaise, XXIX. 259. 

2 Correspondance Genirale, VI. 80, Si. The marquis to the bailH, Paris, March 
13, 1769. 

^ Ibid. ... 



The Youth of Mirabeau 677 

ceive him/ but the marquis assured his brother that he had given 
orders to the best of his abihty that his son should pass incognito, 
"and surely," he added, " he will not go to see you at Mirabeau." ^ 

Events seem to have justified the preventive measures taken by 
the marquis. Drawing his information from Grevin, wno accom- 
panied his son, he described the passage of the young man from 
Rochelle to Toulon in most vigorous language : " This miserable 
Pierre-Buffiere left the lie de Re a hundred times worse than he 
entered it, not on account of his comrades, but because of the lapse 
of his own folly. He fought at Rochelle, where he remained only 
two hours. I have had news from poor Grevin from Saint-Jean- 
d'Angely and from Puy. He says that he goes cursing, striking, 
wounding, and vomiting a rascality that has no equal." ^ M. de 
Montigny, citing a letter of Mirabeau to his brother-in-law, M. du 
Saillant, asserts that in the duel fought at Rochelle Mirabeau was 
not the aggressor. An officer, dismissed in disgrace from his regi- 
ment, with whom Mirabeau refused to associate, was the real cause 
of the trouble.^ 

The soul of the marquis was disturbed more, perhaps, by the 
debts that his son contracted than by his escapades. " Without 
paying for his pranks and a multitude of notes," he wrote, " he has 
devoured more than ten thousand livres in the last eight months, 
and the most of that time he has been in prison. . . . The villain- 
ous notes of that man terribly wound my soul, although well pre- 
pared and accustomed to vomit him up. . . . He has, in addition to 
his other good qualities, that of borrowing from all hands : ser- 
geants, soldiers, all are the same to him." ^ 

" After a painful journey, and even a perilous one in the moun- 
tains of Auvergne and Vivarais, which he was obliged to cross in 
snow twelve feet deep," Mirabeau finally reached Toulon and em- 
barked on the eighteenth of April for Corsica.*^ To be rid, for some 
time at least, " of an odious generation that keeps me without ceas- 
ing with a sword above my head and coals under my feet," ' was a 

'^ Ibid., VI. 83. The bailli to the marquis, Mirabeau, March 7, 1769. 

'^ Ibid., VI. 83. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, March 20, 1769. 

^ /bid., VI. 100. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April 10, 1769. 

*Memoires de Mirabemi, \. 2,02. M. de Pierre-Buffi^re to the Comte du Saillant, 
March 20, 1769. 

^ Correspondance Gen^rale, VI. 100. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April 10, 
1769. 

^ Ibid. For the passage through the mountains see Montigny, Memoires de 
Mirabeau, I. 303, who cites a letter of the marquis to the bailli of April 22, 1769. No 
letter of that date is to be found in the collected correspondence. 

' Correspondance Generale, VI. 100. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April lo, 
1769. 

AM. HIST. REV., VOL. VIII. — 44. 



678 F. M. Fling 

great relief to the marquis. Grevin returned to Paris by way of 
Mirabeau and remained for some time with the bailli, who thus had 
an opportunity to study the man that had acted as a mentor to his 
nephew. He "does not appear to me to be very admirable," was 
the opinion that he expressed to his brother.' The marquis himself 
referred to him as "jealous by nature,"^ and on another occasion 
he criticized him for not maintaining a stricter surveillance over his 
son at Saintes and on the lie de Re.* 

The Corsican campaign was not of long duration. Mirabeau 
landed the last of April, 1769, and the fighting was over in June. 
Although he saw Httle active service, he proved that he had a real 
genius for war and was a worthy descendant of Jean-Antoine. He 
won the good opinion of his superior officers and the affection of 
his associates. The major of the legion, the Chevalier de Villerau, 
declared some years later that " he had never known a man with 
greater talents than the Comte de Mirabeau for the profession of 
arms, if time had rendered him discreet." * Mirabeau wrote in later 
years that this man "loved me much and declared that I was a 
great officer in embryo." ^ 

Here for the first time he displayed the talent for hard work 
and the determination to master the thing in hand that were so 
characteristic of the man. " What I am most of all," he once 
wrote to his sister, " or I am much deceived, is a man of war, 
because there alone I am cool, calm, gay without impetuosity, and 
I feel myself grow in stature."'' He has himself described his 
enthusiasm for his profession and his efforts to master its minute 
details : " Reared in the prejudice of the service, fired with ambi- 
tion, and avaricious for glory, robust, audacious, ardent, and yet 
very phlegmatic,'' as I proved myself in all the dangers that I en- 
countered, having received from nature an excellent and rapid coup 
d'ceil, I had reason to believe myself born for the service. All my 

'^ Ibid., VI. 209. The bailli to ttie marqui.s, Mirabeau, September 23, 1769: 
** IMais rhomine ^ qui tu I'avais confie et qui a passe ici quelque temps ne m'a pas paru 
bien admirable." 

''■Ibid., VI. 139. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, May 30, 1769. 

3 " Grevin et puis tous les superieurs de ce miserable ont laisse aller beau par le plus 
bas de maniere." Ibid., VI. 146. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, June 14, 1769. 

* Lom^nie, III. 38. The remark was made in 1787 and quoted in a letter of the 
marquis. 

^ Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, I. 162. 

^ Mhnoires de Mirabeau, I. 329. Mirabeau to Madame du Saillant, September 11, 
17S0. 

' Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, II. 258 : "Si moi, qui te parle, me sens bien la 
force d'en renverserquelques bataillons en sifflant dessus, c'est que la vie dure que j'ai 
menee, et les exercises violens que j'ai aimes (nager, chasser, escrimer, jouer a lapaume, 
courir k cheval) ont repare les innombrables sottises de mon education." 



The YoutJi of Mirabeau 679 

views had, then, been turned in this direction, and although my 
mind, famished for every kind of knowledge, was interested in all 
sorts of things,' five years of my life were devoted almost exclu- 
sively to military studies ; there is not a book on war in any lan- 
guage living or dead that I have not read ; I can show extracts 
from three hundred military writers, extracts studied, compared, and 
annotated, and memoirs that I wrote upon all parts of the profes- 
sion from the greatest objects of war to the details of engineering, 
of artillery, and even of the commissariat." ^ 

In the period between the close of the campaign and his return 
to France Mirabeau was engaged in making a study of the island, 
its inhabitants, manners and customs, and history. "He perceived 
everywhere the traces of the devastations of the Genoese, the ves- 
tiges of their crimes ; and by this mark of despotism he recognized 
his enemy. His heart, palpitating with indignation, could not con- 
tain itself; his imagination, filled with ideas, flowed over. He wrote ; 
he traced a rapid sketch of the Corsicans and of the crimes of the 
Genoese. This work was taken from him by his father ; it was very 
incorrect, without doubt, but full of animation, of truth, of ideas, 
and of facts carefully observed in a country of which no correct 
notion had been given, because mercenary writers or fanatic enthu- 
siasts had alone undertaken to speak of it." ^ The history dealt 
chiefly with the forty years previous to the French occupation of 
the island. He had also prepared a description of the island, which 
he had studied "foot by foot," "with all possible political, economic, 
and historical details." ^ The history, he claimed, was prepared at 
the instigation of Buttafuoco.' "He took possession of the Cor- 
sicans, he had all their papers." '' Mirabeau declared while at Vin- 
cennes that the "deputies of the three estates of Corsica" besought 
his father to allow the work to be printed, but the marquis refused.' 
This statement should be confronted by the charge made by the 
marquis that his son " seduced a man in order to get possession of 

^ Mirabeau had been an omnivorous reader from his childhood up. He was, accord- 
ing to M. de Montigny, " diis I'age de quatre ans . . . avide de lectures. II s'emparait 
de tous les papiers qui lui tombaient sous la main." Mhnoires de Mirabeau^ 1. 243. 
Mirabeau himself refers to his fondness for books while at school in Paris : "II empruntait 
toutes sortes de livres, les lisait sans methode et sans autre objet que celui d'assouvir son 
insatiable soif de savoir." Essai siir le Despotisme, xix. 

^ Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, III. 21. 

^ Essai stir le Despotisme, Ti-id.^ Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, I. 190. 

* Mhnoires de Mirabeau, I. 317. 

^ Correspondance Generale, VI. 330. The bailli to the marquis, Aix, May 21, 
1770 ; Ibid., VI. 375-3S0. The bailli to the marquis, Aix, August 23, 1770. 

^ Memoires de Mirabeau, I. 316. The marquis to the Comte du Saillant, May 14, 
1770. 

''Lettres Originates de Mirabeau, III. 173. 



68o F. M. Fling 

memoirs that a priest of the country had made ; he promised this 
man to pay him well and to return the memoirs. This man wrote 
a complaint to the late M. Gerardi, officer in the regiment Royal- 
Italian, who informed the Due de Nivernois." ^ 

From evidence such as this it is impossible to get at the truth 
of the affair. Mirabeau undoubtedly made a study of the island 
and its people, even if the motives for doing so were not those given 
by him in later years. It is not inherently impossible that he pro- 
cured material in the way indicated by his father, for it is in keeping 
with methods employed by him throughout his later life, but it 
would be unscientific to state as a fact a thing that rested on a scrap 
of third-hand evidence. The matter of first importance is, how- 
ever, the early development of the inquisitive spirit that never allowed 
him to rest ; that made a great questioner of him, a laborious stu- 
dent, and an untiring investigator. It was no accident that made 
Mirabeau a leader in the National Assembly ; he had prepared him- 
self for leadership by twenty-five years of severe mental effort such 
as few men are capable of 

To make the Corsican episode typical, not even a love-affair was 
lacking. From Vincennes he wrote of this early love to a woman 
whose name has become inseparably associated with his. " Yes, 
madame, yes," he wrote to Sophie de Monnier, "Maria Angela is 
a very pretty name ; and when I was jealous of some one (a thing 
that did not often happen, for I was very lukewarm) she addressed 
injurious remarks to him, or struck him, or as an honest Italian she 
gravely proposed to me to poniard him." We might have known 
more of this affair but for the well-meaning censorship of M. de 
Montigny. He declined to dwell upon Mirabeau's gallantries in the 
island, " of which, happily, he has made public only a brief and suc- 
cinct mention. Not that we have not had in our possession long 
details, written by himself, of a very spirituelle originality ; but we 
at first put them aside and afterward destroyed them, because, as 
we were determined to keep within the bounds of the respect which 
is due to our subject and our age, to the public, and to history, we 
would add nothing to the facts, and above all to the suppositions of 
this kind, which are already to too great an extent attached to the 
name of Mirabeau." ^ M. de Montigny undoubtedly had a right to 
destroy his property if he wished to ; moreover, the attitude of the 
historian toward his subject will always differ from that of a son 
toward his adopted father. The dictates of science are not always 
to be reconciled with the dictates of affection. 

1 Lomenie, III. 38, note 2. 

^ Menioires de Mirabeau, I. 312. 



The Youth of Mirabeau 68 1 

Mirabeau was absent from France a little more than a year. 
During this time he is seldom mentioned in the correspondence be- 
tween the brothers. The marquis was arranging a marriage for his 
daughter Louise at the time of Mirabeau's departure, and hoped to 
carry the thing to a successful conclusion, "provided," he wrote to 
the bailli, " this unhappy fool in Corsica, who devours me, will let 
me get my breath." ' He sometimes regretted the loss of his 
first-born son, " If providence," he exclaimed, "had intended to 
grant me a period of repose at a reasonable age, it would have left 
me the son that it gave me twenty-five years ago. The one (Boni- 
face) who is now our only hope, is only fourteen and more of a child 
than one is at three." ^ 

The bailli had held numerous conversations with Grevin about 
his nephew and had reached conclusions that were not so pessimistic 
as those of his brother. " From what Grevin has said to me in several 
conversations about M. de Pierre-Buffiere," he wrote to the marquis, 
" I do not see that there is anything desperate yet about his case. 
Perhaps age and reason will straighten it all out. I do not hope 
that he will ever be a man worthy of you on the side of the heart, 
but an ordinary man. It is bad enough to place at that notch our 
denomination that has never been there, but what is to be done 
about it ? " ^ The marquis replied by criticizing " Grevin and all the 
superiors of this miserable fellow " for letting him have his own way.* 
He never doubted that the failure of his training was due to the 
inborn badness of his son or the incapacity of his teachers and 
superiors. As hopeless as the task seemed to be, he must do his 
duty that he might be without reproach. " As long as I shall live," 
he wrote in June, 1769, "it will be my duty to follow and to assure 
the lot of my children and of our house. If I can save this un- 
happy eldest, I have told you that I would part with the one who 
is after my own heart and I would give him to you. At fifty, you 
will have begun the profession of father of a family. . . But, finally, 
you will see Boniface ^ this autumn ; everything is as yet in the shell, 
he is nothing. It is necessary to finish his education. We must 
wait for the other, who would get away from the devil and who has 
a dozen of them in his body, must keep an eye on him and restrain 

' Correspondance GSnerale, VI. 115. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, April 28, 
1769. 

''■Ibid., VI. 130. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, May 18, 1769. 

^ Ibid., VI. The bailli to the marquis, Mirabeau, June 2, 1769. 

* Ibid., VI. 148. The marquis to the bailli, Paris, June 14, 1769. 

5 Almost without exception he refers to the younger son as Boniface ; the older boy 
is never called by his name, but is always referred to as " the eldest," " that miserable 
being," " that unhappy fool," etc. 



682 F. M. Fling 

him, and be sure that the people of this age have only cold praise 
for honesty in retirement. / zvas very much devoted to your father. 
I have received so much of that. A well-born child can get on 
without control, but a slippery subject is not held in check at a 
distance, when he fears only letters and disapprobation, and he cer- 
tainly has more people Hke himself in places of power and credit 
than his father has." ' 

The marquis had evidently found the youth that " could get 
away from the devil and had a dozen of them in his body " an ex- 
traordinary child, even if extraordinarily bad and exceedingly diffi- 
cult to control. The term " honesty in retirement" refers to the 
marquis, whose talents were not sufficiently appreciated by the 
government. The closing expressions of the letter would seem to 
indicate that the marquis already foresaw the part that public officials 
might take in the troubles between himself and his son. At Paris, 
at Saintes, and on the lie de Re, Mirabeau had given proof of a re- 
markable power of winning those with whom he came in contact. 
The fear that the marquis here expressed casts a curious light upon 
his attitude toward his son. The attitude is certainly not a fair one. 
The assumption always was that the boy never could amount to 
anything. In August of this year, while Mirabeau was in Corsica, 
the marquis represented that his son-in-law, Du Saillant, was plead- 
ing in behalf of the absent son. " He does not cease to beg of 
me," wrote the marquis, "that in case he [Mirabeau] is finally 
condemned where he is, I should leave him to him [Du Saillant] 
for a year before shutting him up for good." ^ At this time nothing 
had been heard from Corsica. In September the marquis had heard 
nothing later than the news that Viomenil had embarked, and as no 
news is good news, he was happy. " 1 never wake up a sleeping 
cat," ^ was his concluding observation.* 

Fred Morrow Fling. 

' Ibid., VI. 155, 157. The marquis to the bailli, Fleury, June 19, 1769. 

2 Ibid., VI. 178. The marquis to the bailli, Fleury, August 15, 1769. 

" Ibid., VI. 191. The marquis to the bailli, Fleury, September 5, 1769. 

' The most complete accounts of this period of Mirabeau's life that have hitherto ap- 
peared are by Montigny, Menioires de Mirabeau (8 vols., Paris, 1834, 1835), I. 274- 
317; Lomenie, Les Mirabeau (5 vols., Paris, 1879-1891), III. 20-38; and Guibal, 
Mirabeau et la Provence (2 vols., Paris, 1887-1901), I. (edition of 1901), 72-81. 



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